Who is Julian Assange? By the people who know him best

The son, the saviour, the fugitive, the friend, the man. He also has an odd craving for Vegemite
guardian.co.uk, Friday 24 August 2012 18.00 EDT

... The first time I met Assange, he was convinced a sniper was targeting him through the windows of a conference centre. A few hours later, he was happily typing in front of the same windows. I asked why he believed he was a target. "I can't tell you," he said. Then, five minutes later, he did. He told me I should come to Washington DC for a press conference. Why? I can't tell you. Again, five minutes later, he told me about the Collateral Murder video.

Assange attributed his drive to his first experience with power as a young man (hacking into the email of a Pentagon general). I said maybe I liked investigating politicians' expenses because that had been my first big investigation as a student. "No, it's different when you're a young man." Can't women be driven the same way? "No, they're not." It was a definitive statement, no supporting evidence needed ...

I later heard from two other women who said Assange pulled the same "poor little lost boy" trick on them in an attempt to finagle his way into their homes. I said that was not how I conducted interviews. He complained that I didn't have a maternal instinct, adding in drama-queen fashion: "I have two wars to stop."

I replied: "Yeah, it's a tough life being a messiah." His response left me speechless: "Will you be my Mary Magdalene, Heather? And bathe my feet at the cross" ...

8. That's a bit overblown from Mr Ellsberg, isn't it? The "British Empire" is long gone: there are

fourteen British Overseas Territories, the largest three of which (in descending order) are (1) their antarctic research station, (2) the Falklands, and (3) the Sandwich Islands. The total area of the remaining eleven British Overseas Territories does not even come to 750 square miles -- that is, they (combined) are considerable smaller than the state of Rhode Island

Of course, the situation was rather different when Mr Ellsberg was born in 1931, though one might have expected him to notice events such as the independence of India or the Suez crisis or the partition of Palestine or the independence of Zimbabwe or any of a number of other geopolitical moments of import during Ellsberg's youth

Here is someone who actually stood up to the British Empire, back when that Empire existed: